Have you ever wondered why or how the world came to life or why we are here in the first place? We will be attempting to answer these questions in this series of articles. Today I will be talking about the history of the universe, also known as cosmology. The three topics I will be talking about is how hydrogen and helium merged, how stars are created, and how elements are made. To learn more about cosmology check out our other two articles about the big bang and the evolutionary epic.
Everything used to be stars, and everything was pretty much all composed in the bellies of stars. So, how do we know this? When the universe inflated there were quantum fluctuations that happened. A quantum fluctuation is when a force changes the amount of energy there is in a certain amount of space. So, since these fluctuations can be in different amounts of space some of them are less powerful, and some of them are more powerful. As the universe expanded more and more, fluctuations got powerful enough to merge hydrogen and helium together. The universe was really cold and boring before hydrogen and helium connected. So, if hydrogen and helium hadn't clumped together, nothing would've ever happened in the universe at all.
The combination of hydrogen and helium started increasing pressure. When there is a mass amount of pressure, there is also a mass amount of heat. Eventually this created stars with the heat, and ability to forge new elements. As things between the helium and hydrogen get warmer and warmer the atoms start getting really jumpy and fly everywhere. Eventually they all compact into stars. The only way for a star to form is when the right amount of helium and hydrogen is compacted and the cloud of the gasses is big enough. Then that cloud has to build up the right amount of pressure and heat to compact into a star.
As stars run out of hydrogen and helium, the outer part of the star swells starting up the fusion that creates other elements. This fusion of elements can only make elements up to as heavy as iron. So where did the rest of the elements come from? The rest of the elements are formed when giant stars collapse and then make a giant explosion, flinging newly created elements across the universe.
Today we talked about how hydrogen and helium merged, how stars are created, and how elements are made. Cosmology is history to the ultimate level stretching all the way back to the big bang. It is really helpful to study cosmology to understand how the world came about. How the universe went from a vast expanse of nothingness, to the universe we know today. This article is about how that process started, but there was a lot more that had to happen to become all the planets, stars, and galaxies scattered across the universe today.
Sources: https://youtu.be/Fi30zjQhtWY